FOI release

Details of the cost to the taxpayer of the current 'Trip Check' media campaign

Case reference FOI2025/00321

Received 13 February 2025

Published 24 April 2025

Request

Details of the total cost of the campaign and also the itemised costs incurred by the civil service, individual private advertising agencies and media organisations employed which are included within that total amount, providing as much detail as possible. Please provide the information to my email address

Response

Road safety is, and will always be, our number one priority. England’s motorways and major A-roads are some of the safest in the world, but our ambition remains that no-one should be harmed while travelling or working on our roads.

To help us achieve this we run a series of long-term marketing behaviour change campaigns to address the aspects of driver behaviour that contribute to serious and fatal incidents on the SRN, based on the latest KSI data, audience insight and related behaviour change research. Campaigns do this through positive social norming, awareness-raising and driver education.

The Safe T.R.I.P checks campaign aims to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured (KSI) on the strategic road network (motorways and major A-roads) by encouraging drivers to perform vehicle checks including tyre, lights, oil, and fuel levels before long journeys, to plan rest breaks every two hours, and to journey plan and prepare for the weather, carry a winter kit. In 2022, our traffic officer patrols dealt with more than 111,000 breakdowns on motorways and 33.9% of these were caused by tyre issues. STATS19 data also shows 1,260 KSIs were related to fatigue and weather-related issues in 2019.

The Safe T.R.I.P checks radio advert aims to increase awareness and recall levels of the T.R.I.P. acronym to create behaviour change by making the four journey-planning checks become second nature to drivers.

The total cost of the T.R.I.P radio advert is: £1,558,369.40.

The breakdown of these costs as requested is:

Creative Agency costs: £197,470.71

Covers: Strategy development, creative development, jingle development, preproduction costs, production costs and commercial usage fee.

Research Agency costs: £31,950

Covers: Quantitative and Qualitative customer research

Media booking agency: £1,328,948.69

Covers: Media airtime for radio and digital audio channels from December 2024 until March 2025.

Together with the radio advert, the campaign is also being supported across our owned and earned channels (social media, direct mail, PR) and via partnership agreements with KwikFit and Halfords.

Documents

There are no documents for this release.

This is National Highways' response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.

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